“Hacker space” movement sought for U.S.

On a big tent in the center of the Chaos Communication Camp, banners proudly proclaim the presence of the American embassy and its "Hackers on a Plane" tour.

This is the home of the biggest American delegation yet to come to one of these European events. The U.S.-based Hacker Foundation, which is leading a tour of 40 North American hackers through Europe, hopes it turns out to be a turning point for the U.S. scene.

The idea, says Foundation co-founder and treasurer Nicholas Farr, is to get a sense for the potential of European "hacker spaces" — places in the community where local programmers can collectively meet, work, and share infrastructure — and inspire Americans to produce similar facilities at home.

Most American hacker groups work on a more informal basis, meeting at homes, schools or a d-hoc locations that don’t lend themselves to local involvement. The Foundation is hoping to start changing that culture, as well as getting hackers types more deeply involved in the community.

"The idea is to have someplace where hackers can come and have meetings, do good works, and show the community what they’re really about," Farr says. "We want to show people that hackers aren’t criminals, that they’re creative types who have a way of making technology do things it wasn’t originally intended for."

Founded two years ago as non-profit organization aimed at helping provide seed funding and infrastructure for hacker projects, the Foundation soon realized that having space and meeting centers was a critical part of seeding community involvement. The group is starting a prototype hacker space in Washington D.C., hoping both to provide a resource for local programmers, and to show a different face of hackers to the politicians in the area.

European groups, particularly in Germany, have a long tradition of this kind of activity, and in the best spirit of American fact-finding tours, the Foundation is leading its Hackers on a Plane tour through last week’s DefCon conference, this week’s Chaos Communication Camp, and then through stops in Berlin, Vienna, Cologne, Bonn and elsewhere, hoping to get ideas from local organizations.

The five-day camp here on a former Soviet air base near Berlin has been particularly inspiring, Farr says. Americans here are now discussing creating a parallel "Hackers on a Base" camp in the United states, using a decommissioned army facility. Others are eager to start hacker space movements in their own local communities.

"This is expensive, but I think the good works we’ll see over the next few years will justify the trip," Farr says. "We’re hoping this trip winds up being a watershed moment for the U.S. scene."